Reviewers;

Harukei: Well, I'm glad you still liked the end of Arc 2.

Czar Joseph: Pretty much that Sakura's survival instinct turned into a vision for a future where she would be safe and her obsession with Naruto added into it. Let's see how she does.

St3rfire: To end up like Sasuke or to end up like someone else more dark? Those are her choices.

Mangaka Shuzen: I thought that it would make a nice plot twist for the third arc.

Tsukoblue: Thanks!

SkullwingD36: That would be...Amazing! Another I'd want though would be Return of Namikaze, the original version, not the one after FF threatened and he cut out the romance scenes.

Duh Bomb: Naruto: Darkness inside the beauty and the plan she has made for him is something that is the one thing that he cannot do for her. He is scared and yet sees that she is too, and we both know how stubborn they both are. Good Sakura can't understand what he is saying to her, too surrounded by the side that she has always struggled with...the dark side which lies in all of us. And finally, Dark Sakura, is still in control in the way of serving her people as she moves to strike hard and fast.

So, you kind of called it, but that was close enough.

AN: So, hey everyone. I'm back from my vacation, and ready for action! So, now arc 2 is over and the final arc is here to stay. So I'll be short and just get on with the next arc! Enjoy!

Fir & Ice

Arc 3: Trust

Chapter 33: A Chance to Choose Again

(One Year later)

The darkness raged around in a wide circle in the expanse of space, raged within the circle that was earth, and raged especially within the land of the great Haruno. And inside that darkness, a small sun tried its best to shine into the darkness, trying to cast it away, but only a fraction seeped inside, and showed the blizzard raging within the land. The snow and wind swept through the steep mountains, pounding against the rock as hard as it could, as the rock slowly eroded away bit by bit, as cold icy snow and wind blew through the valleys and canyons to spread out as a plateau was seen where a walled city and a castle shinnied darkly into the deep blue light of the day.

Down in the city ramparts and houses, children did not laugh as they walked home from school, and the adults walked around in tight formations, in drills as they practiced tight turns and straight lines. No smiles adorned their faces as they walked wherever they wanted, but all in the same directions. They followed the roads and when one of them walked into their house to rest, another walked out to join the lines.

Meanwhile, up in the castle, magical blue lines and wisps of air moved through the castle's hallways, shining as bright as the aurora lights, and they only grew more frequent and larger as one approached the throne room where slowly, these blue wisps of magic formed from the ground and slowly, heads began to form. These heads slowly grew up from the ground, followed by shoulders and arms and chests covered with armor, and shoulder coverings. The tips of spears shot up from the ground, followed by the poles that they were tied upon and soon, feet covered in armor formed at last and the floor reappeared underneath them.

The magic zipped around the armor, moving inside and outside of them, and slowly, in their other hands, their hands became bright with yellow fiery magic. This yellow magic became swirls of circles, forming a medium sized shield of fire before it solidified, forming a shield of a yellow-blue color. Their eyes opened in an even darker ice blue color than the first time they were created and all fifty of the heads turned and then bowed as they turned to their maker, the witch who they served, as Sakura Haruno stood on the pedestal steps as she brought her arm down and held it in pain.

These new soldiers stood back up and walked out the throne room doors, as Sakura watched them carefully. These new soldiers were stronger in every sense of how that could be described. Their muscles were bigger, their eyes better, their weapons full of magic. They were better, but there were fewer of them. Usually, Sakura could make two hundred, but these new ones required more…attention to detail.

Sakura looked to her right and walked to the window and looked down upon her city, to see the soldiers marching through the city as she had wanted, and now there were birds swirling in circles around the borders, and howling close by. Had Sasuke passed the walls once more?

Sakura sighed as she moved back as she nodded to one of her commanders and they walked out, about to take these new soldiers to the new front line, and Sakura walked to the mirror in the room, hoping that they were able to once again send Sasuke's new inventions away and back over the eastern walls to help out the exhausted defenders along those ramparts.

Sakura winced and gripped the upper part of her arm as her arm began to shiver. Sakura looked around herself before looking down at her arm as her fingers stilled. Slowly, ice grew in petals growing out around her fingertips, as they rose along to her knuckles, and then Sakura whimpered as the frost turned white around her palm and then groaned as it continued. She had really used her magic this time.

Slowly, the magic continued past her wrist before continuing to crack and fizzle on top of her lower arms and slowly circled around the elbow of Sakura's arm. Sakura sighed in sustained pain as the icing stilled at her elbow and she slowly sat down on the steps, as she tried to catch her breath, her lungs shuddering through her throat as she struggled to bring oxygen to her suffering muscles.

Sakura's mind moved through the past year as if it had been a decade. Her time in bed with Naruto brought her breathing to a relative peace before his betrayal to make her breathing become erratic. And then, after a month of Sakura's rage and utter despair, Sasuke had started a new invasion plan.

His new invasion had his men being sacrificed in a new way, in a way that Sakura's soldiers died more often and created a need for them to become stronger. Sakura knew that he was in the favor of a Goddess named Akhlys, even having fought her for a small time a few times or not, but she had thought that she was just using him as her pawn, but now it seemed that he had gained something from her…something she did not even want to think about.

Sakura's eyes looked up at the map that detailed her ever growing ice towards the east and west. Sakura's eyes teamed with tears as she saw just how far her ice had traveled to the west. She…she had tried to head Naruto's warning…in an effort to bring him back, but her powers weren't obeying her anymore. When she had lost her temper at Naruto, her powers had changed, as if it went completely with her emotions, and she wasn't happy at all, so how could she bring her ice back?

Sakura wasn't sure if she still wanted to make her own world, but she still wanted to provide for everyone who believed in her. Her icy landscape didn't affect the people too bad, right? Sakura scoffed at that idea; she had read the reports of the failed harvests, and she knew that people already were coming to kill her. It was really only an amount of time.

"Sakura?" A voice called out and Sakura bent her head over the second floor railing to see a small smiling Layla looking up at her from below. Sakura nodded her head and Layla walked to the side of the room, before moving up a small spiraling staircase to reach Sakura's side.

Layla sighed at the sight of her Queen's arm, an arm that Sakura still after all of this year tried to move to hide at her presence. Layla walked up and gingerly touched the ice on Sakura's arm, causing her Queen to wince as if the ice was a part of Sakura's skin.

"You did it again, Sakura-Sama."

Sakura hissed and looked away. "I had to. Sasuke can't win."

"He won't, Sakura, but the more you use your magic and the longer you use it, the more your arm freezes. Remember last month?"

Sakura cringed at the memory, when her magic froze to her shoulder. "Yes."

"Sakura, sometimes you are such a dummy." Layla shook her head, before suddenly her eyes dulled and she moved in an almost hypnotic manner. Sakura's own eyes shifted ice blue before they returned to emerald and Layla smiled at her. "Shall we get that ice off?"

"Sure, Layla." Sakura smiled, and so Layla's hands joined Sakura's other hand around the ice, and while Sakura's hand turned green, Layla's turned a light yellow and the ice on Sakura's arm slowly began to heat up, and water began to drip down the sides, and down to the floor below. And through the entire process, Sakura's eyes stayed on the window, looking out…towards the west.

On the western edge of the raging blizzard over the Haruno canyons, the Nara Woods stood up in defense of the cold, where snow blanketed the trees and the trunks of the trees as on the forest floor below, only a light snow peppered the ground. And along the dirt and snow covered road, a man wrapped in a black wolf fur coat walked along it, carrying two big stacks of wood wrapped in thick rope made of bark towards the inside of the sprawling city beyond him.

Naruto's eyes looked around him as he moved past the wooden barriers that had been erected around the city over the last few months. Wolves and coyotes now prowled the exterior lands, and the wooden walls did what they could to stop the rallying winds and snow against the lateral winds that came with the light sheet of ice that dug deep into the ground itself.

All around the young sealer, people stayed around the hollow areas of trees, their coats full of fur and insulation as fires heated up the middle and interior of the trees themselves. Naruto looked around at the people, looking for a certain group before spotting them in a different tree than last time and made his way over. He supposed that they had been pushed out again by the continuous growth of refugees into these woods.

Naruto dropped one of the bundles of wood by the tree's hollow entrance and two small kids, no older than seven sprung out and smiled at him before dragging the wood inside and then there were cries of joy from inside as the fire inside became just a little bit bigger.

As Naruto made his way home, his feet moved quickly over the small covering of snow. The Nara Woods had fared much better than the other regions, and Naruto had a strong feeling that it was because he and Sakura's old people were here because of that reason. But because of that, more and more people came here, in the hopes that it would be a chance to rebuild what lives they had left.

Naruto looked up as he reached his tree and kicked the lever, this time about three times he kicked it, because it had frozen over once again and as he moved up the treehouse, he was selfishly glad that his magic had been altered by Sakura to make him warmer. Those precious times in bed with her would make any man warm the rest of their lives, and though he had left her, Naruto's heart was still very, very warm.

Naruto's feet got off the lift three floors lower than his usual and he quickly made his way to the door before knocking lightly and the door immediately unlocked and Ino appeared on the other side. There had been more crimes recently due to food shortages, and people were desperate. Ino smiled at Naruto's face and she let it open wide as Naruto walked in, and slammed the door as he hugged Ino's figure strongly as it shook slightly.

"Thank god you came home." Ino sniffled, hugging Naruto tightly, and Naruto backed up to see her shivering slightly both from the cold and from what he guessed with yet another attempted break in.

Ino backed up after Naruto rubbed her shoulders and walked around her to the fireplace where he bent down to begin another fire. "More kids trying to get in?"

"Y-yeah." Ino shuffled her feet and Naruto looked back to see a scrape along her arm, and Ino's hand was pulled towards Naruto whose hands examined the small bloody flesh.

"Or they almost came inside." Naruto warned.

"I-I gave them some of our bread." Ino retorted, defending herself well enough. Naruto sighed to himself and shook his head.

"Good. But Ino, you shouldn't be here."

"Why not?"

"You should be at the castle with Shikamaru. They have plenty of heat there."

Ino sighed as she walked to the window and cast a glance down at the trees around her. "Not without my people, Naruto." Ino spoke and turned to watch as Naruto nodded his head and went back to lighting the fire. As the fire began to become self-sufficient, Ino walked over and grabbed some fresh blankets and covered Naruto in one and herself in the other, but after a bit, Ino began to poke at the fire with a metal poker.

"…Naruto, you need to go see her."

"…I can't." Naruto spoke quietly as he looked away, but failed to move away due to the cold and so Ino rubbed his shoulder fondly.

"You need to, before this gets out of hand."

"No…" Naruto repeated. Sakrua had to see the error of her ways before he ever saw her again.

"Then you leave me no other option…"

"What do you mean by that?" Naruto asked before there was a knocking on the door, and Naruto looked at Ino who looked away in shame. Naruto got up and made his way to the door, before looking back at her. "Who did you tell that I was here?"

"Just…answer it." Ino blushed and looked away.

Naruto turned back, looked down at the handle, and unlocked it as he opened it and then at the sight of the man on the other side, with his gray hair of one red eye before he sighed.

"Hello…Kakashi-Sensei."

"Hello Naruto, may I come in?"

"I suppose so." Naruto spoke as he turned around and sat on one of couches, before Ino stood back up and smiled at Kakashi, before she left to grab some of the hot water from above the fire and dropped some tea leaves inside the cup.

After blowing softly on the boiling hot tea, Kakashi turned to smile at Ino. "Thank you."

"N-No problem."

"I must say Ino, a common life sort of suits you."

"Oh? I just…am fitting in at the moment."

"I see." Kakashi spoke as he looked to Naruto, and smiled. "I'll cut right to the chase, Naruto…I have been tasked with killing Queen Sakura."

Kakashi watched closely as the metal poker fell from Naruto's now open palm and he whipped around to face the proud Uchiha bound knight. "W-What? Y-You can't! I-It won't change anything!" Naruto breathed.

"I don't have very much of a choice, Naruto." Kakashi sighed as he looked at him. "The alliance has begun to raise and call upon their armies to end this fighting. In two months' time, if we do not have both Sakura and Sasuke dead, then the world will be at war with too many countries to stop. Everyone is scared by this frost that has now plagued the land and the recent lack of communication with even the neutral countries in the lands across the sea. We have lost last year's harvest, and we cannot last another winter, Naruto. We need to resolve this manner before the end of fall."

Naruto breathed out through his mouth roughly, tears moving into his eyes as he leaned against the inside of the tree, against the doorframe. Ino looked to Naruto worriedly before he straightened his frame.

"Kakashi, I have seen Sakura's magic persist for long periods of time. If you kill her, her magic will not die."

"We can only hope that it does…unless…." Kakashi paused and looked to Ino who nodded her head rapidly at him, and Naruto had a suspicion that they had already agreed on some things.

"Unless what?"

Kakashi looked directly into the young blonde's eyes. "You come with us, Naruto. Instead of killing her, we take her prisoner and you have the job of convincing her to stop all this."

"You mean seduce her…"

"I mean persuade her to see our side of things. Naruto, you know that I was close with Sakura. She was always a visionary, but she cannot continue this. You know this Naruto!" Kakashi yelled as Naruto again turned away and rubbed his face before leaning on his left shoulder against the wall to the hallway.

"…I can't go back there."

Kakashi sighed as he stood up. "I was afraid of that. Well, my company leaves tomorrow morning at the docks. We leave with the tide…If you change your mind…" Kakashi bowed to Ino who curtsied back and walked out the door, and Ino watched as Kakashi made a motion for her to talk to Naruto and she nodded her head slowly. After the door closed, Ino leaned against the counter to the kitchen, and looked down the hall as Naruto's shoulders shook wildly as hushed sobs filled the room.

Later that night, Naruto sat on the ground beside Ino, their heads resting against the pillows around them next to the fire. Ino looked over, tired of reading one of her medical books in the dwindling moonlight, at Naruto as he simply sat beside her, his own sealing book useless in his lap as his eyes stared at the fire before them.

In order to allow more warm places among the refugees and to make Ino feel safer, Naruto let travelers from the other regions use his place as an area away from the storming blizzard blowing outside at night. Instead, he allowed them to use his treehouse while he shared with Ino.

Ino sighed and decided to use this time to get the information out of her good friend. "Naruto?"

"Huh?"

"Why aren't you going?"

"...I don't know." Naruto sighed and after looking at Ino's inquisitive face, he sighed once more. "I ran away on an impulse, and gave her an ultimatum at the time but…Ino, I betrayed her all on my own this time. Despite what I had heard her say and what she had been planning, it was all me who left her after I had promised to follow her.

"I tried to get her to come with me and she tried to get me to stay. She said that she would provide for you, Ino."

"She has…" Ino smiled softly as she recalled just after the frost began to hurt them.

The people of Port Haruno who she was charged with had officially moved here to the Nara Woods and they owned a small three acres of land which was really just a small patch of ground. But this ground changed after Naruto returned, in which the ground was not covered in snow or ice, but fertile lands. It was soon seen that as soon as they planted crops, they grew to fruition the next day or so, and so those around them could continue to eat and live, though they tried to save everyone in that process, bit without more land, there was only so much they could provide. And as Sakura had promised, the Nara Woods held the most of Ino's people, so they had the best weather in all the land, and had received many refugees from the Inuzuka icecaps and forests, as well as other cities to the north who could not survive up there anymore.

Ino rubbed Naruto's shoulder as he sighed dejectedly and she smiled at him encouragingly. "Naruto, you need to decide for yourself if you want to see her again alive…or dead." Ino saw the indecision in his eyes and leaned forward, pressing her lips softly into Naruto's cheek. "Goodnight." Naruto looked up from his stare and watched as Ino walked down the hallway to her bedroom and then back into the firelight dying before him. Ino was right. She had a decision to make.

The morning sun beat down upon the world, and the new snow and ice that formed along the land and sea refracted around the light and sent it back into the atmosphere, causing the climate to cool dramatically in the cold morning.

Down at the Nara docks, Kakashi stood in his royal armor, flexible and light for a close combat fight, and unlike some knights, Kakashi did not wear his helmet, favoring, like his special ninja unit, to see the whole scene around him. But as Kakashi looked down the road, he saw no one approaching in the dawn light and sighed.

He had hoped that Naruto would change his mind and that they would have a chance. He had no doubt in his mind that his men had a big chance of not returning from this mission. Sakura was very proficient with a sword in her hands and she would only do that once one got within range of her. Until then, she could hold them back at a distance, killing them at her will and leisure. He turned to look at his men, all three hundred of them, and on each of their shoulders with a gold circle, symbolizing the unity of the Alliance that the Haruno had formed now twenty years ago. It would tear at him to have to destroy the Haruno family that had created this alliance in the first place, but it had to be done.

"Kakashi!" A voice called and the middle aged Knight turned to see a snow cloud fluff up behind the figure of Naruto standing before him, with his pack by his side. Kakashi sighed and smiled at him.

"So…you decided to come?"

"On some more conditions," Naruto explained. "First off; you agree that you nor your men will kill Sakura. I don't care if she kills your men, you don't kill her. Second, I get to stay around her at all hours, and the last will be that no harm comes to her for her actions up until now. She has been pushed into a corner, and I will take care of her." Naruto finished with strain in his voice, and Kakashi had a feeling that he had spent most, if not all, of the night coming up with these conditions.

"Agreed, but only if you create seals to restrain her tightly to where she can't use her magic."

"...Agreed."

""Then come on. Let's get out while the tide is good."

AN: Now, let's see where the rest of our story leads.